This invention relates to a terminal-movable connector receiving and holding terminals to which mating terminals are screw-fastened, respectively.
There is known one conventional terminal-movable connector in which an end portion of each terminal connected to a wire is connected to one end portion of a bus bar by a bolt and a nut, and the other end portion of the bus bar is connected to a terminal of an external cable by a bolt and a nut (see, for example, Patent Literature 1). This terminal-movable connector will be described with reference to FIG. 6.
As shown in FIG. 6, in the terminal-movable connector 100, the wire 150 is received in a housing 102, using a rubber plug 101, and a conductor 151 of the wire 150 is connected to the terminal 103. The terminal 103 connected to the wire 150 is connected to the one end portion of the generally L-shaped bus bar 106 by screwing the bolt 104 into the nut 105. The terminal 161 of the external cable 160 is connected to the other end portion of the bus bar 106 by screwing the bolt 107 into the nut 108.
In this terminal-movable connector 100, in order to absorb a positional variation (that is, an offset) of the terminal 103 for the terminal 161 of the external cable 160, the one end portion of the bus bar 106 for relay purposes is provisionally fixed to the terminal 103 by the bolt 104 and the nut 105, and then the bolt 107 and the nut 108 at the other end portion of the bus bar 106 (which is to be connected to the terminal 161) are completely tightened, and then the bolt 104 and the nut 105 are completely tightened.
At this time, in case there is a relative offset between the terminal 161 of the external cable 160 and the bus bar 106, the bolt 104 and the nut 105 are shifted in an upward-downward direction (FIG. 6), utilizing a bolt slot 109 in the terminal 103 and a nut receiving portion 110 of the housing 102 which is larger in size than the nut 105, and by doing so, the offset of the bus bar 106 relative to the terminal 161 of the external cable 160 is absorbed.
Therefore, two sets of bolts and nuts are required for one bus bar 106, and therefore the number of the parts increases. And besides, the screwing operations must be effected respectively at the two regions, that is, for the set of bolt 104 and nut 105 and the set of bolt 107 and nut 108. Furthermore, the bolt-screwing directions are different from each other, and more specifically are perpendicular to each other, and therefore a plurality of openings must be provided for effecting the screwing operations respectively in the different directions, and also the outer size must be increased. As a result, the housing has the increased size.    Patent Literature 1: JP-A-2003-317821 Publication
This invention has been made in view of the above circumstances, and an object of the invention is to provide a terminal-movable connector in which the number of parts can be reduced, and also the position of each terminal can be adjusted with a simple structure.